Speciality Review #2: Avery's Hog Heaven Barleywine style Ale

Astute readers may notice (hey Nathan what's up) that instead of the term "extreme" I've used specialty. I'm still going to maintain the numbering system I started in the last review because I wan to maintain my continuity. I'm going to give the term a spin for a while, if it doesn't work I'll go back to extreme, if only for a lack of a better term. I don't know, maybe I should frame the discussion in terms of specialty beers antithetical position in relation to the more commonly enjoyed session beer and calling it event beer or something. Anyway, that's not important right now, what is important is the beer I'm reviewing, in this case actually a barley wine, Avery Brewing Company's Hog Heaven Barleywine Style Ale. Now I'm not sure if this is actually a barleywine or just an ale that is made like a barleywine or if there is some geographic protection on the name barleywine (sort of like champagne), but I'm going to treat this as a beer anyway. This is of course problematic but for the sake of my blog (and the fact that only one person reads this blog) and the fact that in this country a barleywine is more or less a speciality brew I will treat it as a beer.

Anyway, I bought this one yesterday because I was in the mood for a "fancy beer" from Belgium. Of course this meant a "Chimay" but I couldn't find a bottle smaller than a 750 so instead I ended up with this bad boy at about the same size.

I hate to keep going back to Dogfish (the next review I do won't allow me to, hopefully) but this beer reminded me strongly of Dogfish 120. The connection is obvious, for all intents and purposes Dogfish 120 is a barleywine, and actually a much stronger one than this one, which only comes in at about 9.2% abv. I really liked this one actually, despite both my father and Nathan sort of dismissing the form altogether. I don't know what Nathan's problem is, but I know my father has had a long history of drinking beer (longer than I've been alive) and whatever his issue was it was probably important. Interestingly enough my father also liked this one, and despite his insistence that he would probably pour most of what I gave him back into my glass he drank all of it. I guess that gives you some idea of quality.


And another thing, I like Avery a lot. I've had their Salvation ale, which is 10%abv and one other which was about 9% abv. Colorado is doing a lot of exciting things with beer, so is Belgium, so is New Belgium. Ok New Belgium is actually just producing a lot of quality session beer, but who ever said that was so bad? Not me that's for sure.



Authorial voice comes through



achh I'm tired of things. Listening to Converge on my new noise canceling headphones, it's pretty intense I feel so disconnected from my typing because I cannot hear it.


Also New Year's celebration coming up, super excited!